Recent developments in the cable television industry have allowed content providers (or “asset providers”), such as Home Box Office, NBC, and Warner Bros., to provide a variety of cable television services to cable subscribers. For example, a Movie-on-Demand service allows a cable subscriber to view a movie over the cable network with the same type of control that a person typically has over a video cassette recorder (“VCR”) or digital versatile disk (“DVD”) player. More specifically, the Movie-on-Demand service allows a cable subscriber to view a movie over the cable network at any time and to control the delivery of the movie using fast-forward, stop, pause, or rewind functions. However, one limitation of conventional Movie-on-Demand services is that content providers must pre-package Movie-on-Demand assets in a Movie-on-Demand format and distribute the asset to each cable headend that will make the asset available to cable subscribers. In other words, cable subscribers can only request to view those assets that have been specifically formatted by the content providers for Movie-on-Demand viewing and distributed to one or more cable headends.
In addition, the television industry has recently witnessed the introduction of Personal Video Recorder (“PVR”) devices, which allow subscribers to record television content and to view the recorded content at a later time. In the conventional art, a PVR device installed in a subscriber's home can record and store television content in digital format on the hard disk of the PVR device. In this way, a subscriber can control the delivery of recorded television content using stop, pause, rewind, and fast forward commands similar to those used on a VCR or DVD player.
PVR devices, however, have several limitations. First, a PVR device is limited in the amount of digital television content it can store on its hard disk. Additionally, a cable subscriber must first manually pre-select the television content it wants to record (or the PVR device must record the television content according to a pre-defined profile for the cable subscriber) before the cable subscriber can actually view the recorded television content at a later time. In other words, a cable subscriber cannot view at a later time any television content that has not been previously recorded by the PVR device. Moreover, a PVR device is limited to the number of television programs it can record at one time by the number of tuners it has available.
Additionally, once a PVR device records television content, content providers no longer have any control over the delivery of the content. For example, when viewing television content recorded on the PVR device, cable subscribers can avoid viewing television commercials by fast-forwarding past them. Similarly, once the television content is recorded, the content providers and the cable headends can no longer supplement old television commercials with newer television commercials based upon when the cable subscriber chooses to view the recorded television content. Finally, the cost of installing and maintaining PVR devices in the customers' homes is very expensive compared to the current class of digital set top boxes used to provide television services.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for a system and method that allows a cable subscriber to select and view television content on-demand at any time without first requiring the cable subscriber to have recorded the television content on an in-home recording device. Additionally, there is a need in the art for a system and method that does not limit the amount of television content that a cable subscriber can view on-demand. Similarly, there is a need in the art for a system and method that does not limit when a cable subscriber can view television content. Finally, there is a need in the art for a system and method that allows a content provider or cable headend to maintain control over television content that is made available for on-demand viewing by cable subscribers.